Superconducting qubits are one of the most promising candidates for developing commercial quantum computers. Indeed, superconducting qubits can be fabricated using standard microfabrication techniques. Moreover they operate in the few GHz bandwidth such that conventional microwave electronic technologies can be used to control qubits and readout the quantum states.
A significant challenge in quantum computation is the sensitivity of the quantum information to noise. The integrity of the quantum information is limited by the coherence time of the qubits and errors in the quantum gate operations which are both affected by the environmental noise.
One manner to address this issue is to design and use topological qubits, which are intrinsically protected against noise. Topological qubits employ quasiparticles called anyons, and more specifically non-Abelian anyons. However, non-Abelian anyons have not yet been found in nature. This has hindered the development of topological quantum computers.